ASA quick style guide

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4th Nov 2018

The ASA citation style is intended for composing university and college research papers in the sphere of
sociology. As a rule, it focuses on the organization of bibliographies together with footnotes. The ASA
Guide defines standards for the given style published for the American Sociological Association, which is
one of the main organizations for academic sociologists within the United States of America. The ASA
research paper format is meant to assist writers and authors in writing manuscripts for the ASA
publications.

To write a good and well-organized paper on Sociology, it is necessary to meet all general formatting
instructions mentioned below:

Use 12-point font (it may be Times New Roman, Arial, etc.) for your double-spaced paper; note that only
black color can be used.

Set 1-inch margins on all sides. In some other cases, margins may reach 1 ¼ at most.

Pages should be numbered.

Do not forget to divide the text into paragraphs.

Keep in mind that your paper has to include the title.

Usually, your name needs to be present at the cover page, though it will be the best to put it on every
single page.

When your paper is partitioned into separate parts, every part has to be provided with a title typed in
bold.

Introduce the quotation consisting of one or two lines in the body as any other sentence, but applying
quotation marks.

Should you be expected to hand in your paper in the electronic format, it has to be presented in either
.pdf, .doc, .rtf, or .html depending on the requirements of your instructor.

In general, it is better to avoid using endnotes alongside with footnotes.

Every single source that has been used to prepare the paper needs to be indicated on a separate page
titled “References.” Here, your task is to put all sources in an alphabetical order with the surname of
an author going first. When a source has several authors, organize references by publication dates.
Sources cited need to be formatted with the usage of hanging indent.

When it is hard to understand how to complete the cover page in a correct way, ask your instructor or
professor to give you the ASA title page example, or find it yourself online.

Remember that those quotations, which comprise more than three lines, should be organized as a block quote.
It is not necessary to make corrections concerning spelling or grammar in quotes unless there are no other
options. In instances when it is required to do just that, point out with brackets what has been changed by
you. When bad grammar concerns you, it is always allowed to leave the quote, but you should follow it with
sic meaning "it is no different from the original." If you want to assure yourself that you are going
through all steps correctly when it comes to quoting, try looking for the ASA style guide sample paper and
see how the quotes are structured there.

Getting back to endnotes and footnotes, it is worthy to keep in mind that they can be useful to introduce
supporting and explanatory materials and facts. In accordance with the ASA citation guide, if you are going
to apply them, assure yourself that they are numbered in a proper way. Endnotes are placed at the closure of
the whole text. You can place footnotes on every page’s bottom in small type. Pick one style and adhere to
it; remember that endnotes together with footnotes are, in general, not applied to regular citations.

ASA Citation Style Recommendations

The given style is considered a parenthetical style of citation, which takes over an author-date system of
documents. Such format tends to be very convenient for sociologists as they are not distracted by confusing
footnotes. This format includes:

In-text citations put close to sources; such citations cover the date of publication together with the
surname of an author embraced with parentheses

Section titled “References” that enumerates all sources referred to in the essay or paper, including
complete publication data for every single source

All in-text citations have to be linked to the reference list entry. The purpose of such citations lies in
directing your audience to the list of sources used. Therefore, the given list needs to be organized in
alphabetical order and give all the necessary pieces of information for readers to find the initial source
easily. If you are not sure whether the list of references was prepared correctly, it is better to address
the ASA citation creator and check the whole list.

The given format has a lot of similar features with Chicago and APA formatting styles. At the same time, all
mentioned styles possess several considerable differences; for this reason, it is quite significant to go by
the official ASA manual guide.

ASA CITATION GUIDE

ASA citation format is quite similar to the author-date system accepted by Chicago formatting style. Every
single in-text citation comprises such elements as the surname of a writer or author and year of publication
in parentheses. In general, the given citation is put at the end of the sentence. Thus, it is extremely
important to refer to every source accurately and completely to get rid of plagiarism.

When your ASA in-text citation is done, it is recommended to check it, looking through examples below:

When the name of an author is indicated in the body, add a parenthetical citation, pointing out the
publication year

When Chu (1975) studied…

When the author’s names are not pointed out in the body, mention the author’s surname together with
the year of publication in parentheses

When the study was completed… (Snow 1991).

Add page numbers when you are going to quote directly from a source

…as reported by Chavez (1971:82).

If this or that source has three writers, refer to all three surnames in your first in-text citation;
in all other cases, apply et al.

This was reinforced by recent research on the topic (Johnson,
Smith, and Marcus 1998)

Later: (Johnson et al. 1998)

When one of the sources has five authors or even more, apply et al. in every citation

In compliance with the ASA style citation briefing notes, in case you refer to a few sources when
writing the same statement, dates of publication and surnames of authors need to be differentiated
from others with a semicolon.

In case a source has been reprinted once or several times, point out the latest version

(Marwell 1997/2010).

ASA CITATION FORMAT AND REFERENCING

A correct reference list is of great importance as it gives an opportunity to the audience to find and verify
materials applied by you within the work. ASA format citation tips pointed out below will definitely assist
you in arranging the list of references:

A reference list always starts with a new page titled "References."

Enumerate all citations by the surname of an author; remember that citations have to be enumerated in
alphabetical order.

Avoid including initials but indicate the first names.

In accordance with the ASA reference format rules, citations have to be double-spaced; apply a double
line in order to make the space between entries.

When adding two names together in one citation, “&” is not an acceptable option, as “and” should be
used instead.

Put a comma when pointing out more than two names of writers.

Your task is to capitalize all words, excluding prepositions, conjunctions, and articles; you can
capitalize the above-mentioned exceptions only when starting titles or subtitles.

When adding several works composed by the same writer(s), first add their complete names to each
citation in accordance with the ASA writing style guide. After that, you have to organize these
citations chronologically,

starting from the earliest piece of work.

It can be a case when an author emerges as the first one in a citation with multiple writers or a
single-authored citation; then, you need to put all citations with a single writer foremost.

Gladwell, Malcolm. 2002. The Tipping Point: How Little Things
Can Make a Big Difference. New York, NY: Back Bay Books.

Ehrenreich, Barbara. 2009b. Living with a Wild God: A
Nonbeliever’s Search for the Truth about Everything. New York: Twelve.

Place a state abbreviation only in case a city of publication is not widely known. For instance, Los
Angeles does not require abbreviations of the state. Nevertheless, Cambridge has to have
an appropriate state abbreviation.

As it can be seen from any ASA format template, in the case when there is no date, you should apply N.d.
instead of the date. If the referred material is unpublished yet, you may point out Forthcoming
instead of the year and add the publisher title.

In agreement with your publisher or professor’s preferences, it can be necessary to add a reference list
together with a page of bibliography. Therefore, the next examples will introduce ways of the common usage
of various source types:

Book with one author

Author’s full name (place the last name out front).
Publication Date. Italicized Publication Name. Location of a publisher, state or province
postal code: Name of the publisher.

Author 1 (change the surname), Author 2 (add a full surname),
and Author 3. Date of publication. Italicized Name of the Publication. Publisher’s location,
postal code of state or province: Name of publisher.

Author 1 (invert the surname), Author 2 (add a complete
surname, which, as a rule, is not inverted), and Author 3. Year of publication. “Name of Article.”
Name of Publication in italics Volume Number (Issue Number): article’s pagination.

Goodman, Leo A. 1947a. “The Analysis of Systems of
Qualitative Variables When Some of the Variables Are Unobservable. Part I-A Modified Latent
Structure Approach.” American Journal of Sociology 79: 1179-1259.

Please draw your attention to the first example, and you will see that it contains the issue number
indicated after volume number; you have to add issue numbers there to assure that a source can be
located easily.

Books’ Chapters

Author 1 (invert the surname), Author 2 (add a complete
surname without inverting the surname), and Author 3. Publication year. "Article’s Title.” Pp. in
Italicized Name of Publication, edited by Editor 1, Editor 2, and Editor 3 (do not invert
names and apply editors’ initials for first and middle names). Publisher’s location, postal code of
state or province; Name of publisher.

The ASA format sample paper citation: Wells, Ida B. 1995.
“Lynch Law in All Its Phases.” Pp. 80-89 in With Pen and Voice: A Critical Anthology of
Nineteenth-Century African-American Women, edited by S.W. Logan. Carbondale: Southern
Illinois University Press.

Are you going to cite the other source types? If yes, you may check the Section 4.3.2.2. in the official ASA
Style Guide for a great number of examples that will show you how to refer to other documents. It may be
dissertations, magazine articles, major reference books, government documents, presentations, etc.

More often than not, students tend to leave the task to create the reference list until the very last second.
Of course, when doing so, one should mind possible consequences. To avoid the problems, it is better to look
for a good ASA citation maker online. Such citation maker will be able to compose your whole list in just a
few minutes.

Citing Electronic Sources

Across all disciplines in the field of sociology, researchers and students use a large number of online
source types in order to back up ideas and thoughts from social media channels to websites, blogs,
machine-readable data files, DVDs, and so on. There are several points to remember when referring to
electronic sources:

Add all basic elements concerning a source to give readers a possibility to access the material easily.
If you want to be sure that you have created a correct citation, you can find the ASA format example
paper with the list of references.

Sources that will not be changed, in most cases have to be referred to in the print form.

Whenever possible, you need to add an address (DOI or URL), year of publication, document’s name, and
the name of the author.

ASA WEBSITE CITATION RULES: URL INDICATION

A URL is considered a very important element when one needs to locate an online document. Nevertheless,
websites are often updated or modified, so it is necessary to mind the steps mentioned below when adding a
URL to a citation.

Be sure that a source may be easily identified; to do that, check the URL spelling

Do not cite a source with the URL that does not exist anymore

Avoid typing the URL address; instead of that, copy and paste it from your browser

It may be useful to print and save all the data obtained from the website as the information can be lost
when the URL is modified.

Below, you may familiarize yourself with a list of examples of how to cite electronic sources in a correct
way.

E-Books

In case you have used an e-book online, avoid adding numbers of pages and access date.

If an e-book can be used in several formats, list these formats as well (Also available at: [URL]).

In general, when being engaged in the ASA website citation indication procedure, remember that any essential
data from the website has to be formally cited with the date of access or URL. Therefore, always pay close
attention to your citations in the reference list.

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